What audio system do you have, or plan on getting?

[Florestan]

It's also one of the few male pieces of status 'jewelry'.
Nobody really needs a wristwatch anymore.
You have a phone for checking the time.

Of course. Phone, car watch, computer watch. I have not had a wristwatch since I can't remember when. 

[Valentino]

I have two. Don't like not wearing one. Faster than the phone. My sons (20 and 18) don't wear watches though.

[Fëanor]

Blind tests are the only way to remove expectation bias from the equation. Expectation bias renders listening tests useless, because it is about your expectations of the sound rather than the sound itself.

Absolutely and categorically true, of course.

(... Although there a been more than a few occasions when my subjective impression was much different that what I had expected or hoped for.)

[Harry]

Watches are another passion of mine, especially mechanical ones. I have three of them, and very please with them, and with leather straps I might add.

[Valentino]

Bought a couple of Oris watches some thirty years ago. My sons have inherited them. Hopefully they'll use them some time in the future.
My daily watch now is a Braun AW10, and for suiting up a Braun AW50. Both are nice light quartz watches with easy to read hands.

For hifi I plan to get a MM cartridge for the turntable, a lot of my listening is not really worth the (to me) rather expensive MC I'm using now.

The other stuff I have is just fine, even if it's not your average hifi shop gear.

[drogulus]

Shall listen to that needle drop, drogulus. Haven't heard that recording.
I don't do needle drops myself. Playing LPs is half ritual, and I don't go to church much, so...

    Just to be clear, it doesn't matter which drop you use. I only have this one. The quality of the LP should be high only because there is something worthwhile to compare with a digital copy. The LP should sound very good by the standards appropriate for the medium, so a tester can judge if something essential to good sound is lost in translation.

    It's important that this kind of test renders questions about the quality of the turntable and phono and preamp stages irrelevant because they are the same for the original and copy. Only the conversion from analog to digital matters. If you mess up and clip the digital you get a do over. No "loudness war" or other recording blunders figure into the outcome.

[Herman]

I have two.

Me three. Two 18 K vintage wind-ups and one battery operated Lacroix from 1990, light on the wrist.

[drogulus]

     A watch with a 12ax7 in it will sound less digital.

     Sorry, I got confused. Some guy was discussing a tube DAC and my mind was wandering like the wild geese in the West.

   

     It's kind of a "not a bang but a whimper" deal, isn't it?

[Valentino]

That's the funniest litte box I've seen today.

[Spotted Horses]

A watch is useful even though I always carry a phone, which I have hoist out of my picket and activate to see the time. Plus I sometimes find myself where I am at risk of dropping the thing onto a hard surface or water, which would be an expensive proposition. I understand the motivation for having a nice watch, within limits. I'm willing to pay more than absolute minimum so as to not have an ugly piece of plastic on my wrist.

[Irons]

My watch is nearly as old as me circa 1954 (the watch not me) and keeps perfect time.

[Herman]

A Zenith, nice.

My two vintage watches are from the same early fifties era, an Omega and a IWC.

[Mandryka]

I have an omega seamaster but it has stopped and it feels too expensive to maintain - about £500 - the dial (bezel?) needs touching up too.  It's been in a drawer for five years and I may well give it to charity, I'm happy with my phone.

[Bachtoven]

I just received a Roon Nucleus Plus music server--so far I love it. I've had so many problems with both my HP laptop and MacBook Pro, that I decided to splurge on a dedicated server. It's not exactly an eye-catching piece of gear, but it works great. (I didn't take that picture, but my setup is identical: a Chord Qutest DAC and an external hard drive.)

[Harry]

I just received a Roon Nucleus Plus music server--so far I love it. I've had so many problems with both my HP laptop and MacBook Pro, that I decided to splurge on a dedicated server. It's not exactly an eye-catching piece of gear, but it works great. (I didn't take that picture, but my setup is identical: a Chord Qutest DAC and an external hard drive.)

Very good choices! Congrats!

[DavidW]

Do you need to pay a monthly sub to Roon to use your server?

[Bachtoven]

Very good choices! Congrats!

Thank you. I prefer the way both Audirvana and JRiver deal with playlists, but that's about the only shortcoming and isn't a deal breaker. (Previously, I had a playlist for historical eras--Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Contemporary, plus a separate one for guitar and piano, but I don't seem to be able to create anything similar so far...might take more research.)

[Bachtoven]

Do you need to pay a monthly sub to Roon to use your server?

They give a free one-year software subscription, then you have the option of monthly, yearly, or a lifetime subscription. I'll probably opt for monthly in case I end up not keeping it, which doesn't seem likely at the moment, but one never knows!

[Daverz]

Fellows, your audio posts are off-topic, this is the watch forum.

[Daverz]

They give a free one-year software subscription, then you have the option of monthly, yearly, or a lifetime subscription. I'll probably opt for monthly in case I end up not keeping it, which doesn't seem likely at the moment, but one never knows!

That seems like a very generous amount of time to decide whether the software is really indispensable enough to pay the lifetime fee.